Can someone post the text, I'm too 'British' to read the BBC website, apparently, and too lazy to faff with proxies everytime one of these links comes along.

Since black holes emit radiation, a tiny black hole should only last a very short time, not long enough to do any serious harm, so what's the problem? It's not like it'd feed, grow, and start swallowing the Earth.

Any blackhole created in the lab would evaporate via Hawking Radiation in an extremely short timespan, and would have such a fantasically small event horizon that a proton would be as big compared to it as the sun is to a small rock from your backyard.

You'd have to create a blackhole from a Mt. Everest worth of mass before there was any potential that it could grow faster than it would evaporate.

Also, we would not be able to create a black hole that is large enough to withstand being ripped a part by the Earth's larger gravity.

???????

An object with the density of less than 2 of the particles used to create it will not have the gravitational pull to do much damage. Even if the thing did survive the Earth's gravity, and also did not evaporate, it would take thousands if not millions if not billions of years for the thing to get large enough to do any damage.

Slaxl: Since black holes emit radiation, a tiny black hole should only last a very short time, not long enough to do any serious harm, so what's the problem? It's not like it'd feed, grow, and start swallowing the Earth.

1) Black holes will have the same mass as the material that was collapsed to create them.

2) Gravitation follows the inverse square law.

3) The reason that regular black holes are difficult to escape is because the mass of the sun (really big) is collapsed to a singularity (really small). So that all of the gravitational strength is concentrated on a tiny little point.

Therefore, if you want to create a black hole that's going to cause trouble here on earth, you need to start with a big mass ... like your mom.

FrancoFile:But the micro black hole is portable. Create the black hole in a fixed facility, drop it in a container, and put the container on a boat/plane/whatever.

If you want a portable energy source, build a battery. Or a modular nuclear reactor. Or whatever. Not a black hole containing a micro-Joule of energy, which will evaporate instantaneously upon its creation, that requires a 5-mile wide, 100-megawatt supercollider to create.

lordargent:Slaxl: Since black holes emit radiation, a tiny black hole should only last a very short time, not long enough to do any serious harm, so what's the problem? It's not like it'd feed, grow, and start swallowing the Earth.

1) Black holes will have the same mass as the material that was collapsed to create them.

2) Gravitation follows the inverse square law.

3) The reason that regular black holes are difficult to escape is because the mass of the sun (really big) is collapsed to a singularity (really small). So that all of the gravitational strength is concentrated on a tiny little point.

Therefore, if you want to create a black hole that's going to cause trouble here on earth, you need to start with a big mass ... like your mom.

Oh yeah? Well... if you want my comeback you'll have to scrape it off your mothers teeth.

What about using it as a way to dispense of garbage? If only a Mount Everest of material could make a black hole of dangerous proportions why not just make Mount Kilamanjaro's of trash, and black hole them up? Aside from the whole "gotta learn how to do it first", and the resources and effort required might not be that efficient a use of the energies... but still, less trash lying around?

meat0918:PartTimeBuddha: meat0918: The Crepes of Wrath: Quantum Apostrophe: Also, we would not be able to create a black hole that is large enough to withstand being ripped a part by the Earth's larger gravity.

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It's more that the black hole would evaporate, not get ripped apart by Earth's gravity.

shiat, evaporate not ripped apart.

I always get that messed up.

Having a wee alt moment, are we?

Nope, just admitting I got a few terms mixed up when responding to QA.

Well, the gravity gradient is the problem, that's what does "ripping". Absolute gravity does "squashing". That's what it says in my Physics for Luddites./Earth has neither

From TFA: known as the Planck length, is approximately 1020 times smaller than an atomic nucleus. (In numbers, the Planck length is about 1.6 × 10-35 metres, compared to the 1 x 10-15 metre size of a nucleus.)

Article/Math fail.

Aside from the nanoscopic black holes are probably being made on a daily basis from high-energy collisions in the upper atmosphere, we just are never able to detect them because of their extremely short lifespan.

FrancoFile:Ambitwistor: FrancoFile: zero-point fluctuations around a very small black hole could provide nonpolluting energy

You're not going to get more energy out of a black hole than you put into creating it. The laws of thermodynamics win again.

I know that.But the micro black hole is portable. Create the black hole in a fixed facility, drop it in a container, and put the container on a boat/plane/whatever.

I think the point is that if black holes evaporate by giving off Hawking Radiation, and you can create a situation whete you have a very tiny black hole and you feed it matter at the same rate it boils off, you can actually get very efficient matter to energy conversion.

/ Very speculative, of course.// But as the article mentions, it's not believed to be remotely feasible.

Cubicle Jockey:Any blackhole created in the lab would evaporate via Hawking Radiation in an extremely short timespan, and would have such a fantasically small event horizon that a proton would be as big compared to it as the sun is to a small rock from your backyard.

You'd have to create a blackhole from a Mt. Everest worth of mass before there was any potential that it could grow faster than it would evaporate.